Thanks for following along with me Don!
Today I had a short amount of time in the shop. I was able to finish up the Fuel Bunker Insides and start working on the Motion Support Plate.
Several weeks (months?) back I had cut & shaped the sheet metal for the Fuel Bunker Insides. So all I had to do was to form them and drill the mounting hole.
Here’s a series of shots showing the forming of the Fuel Bunker Insides. We start with the part set up in in the cheap-o brake, prior to bending.
Here we are post-bend.
The one in back is completed, the one in front is going to be up next!
Then over to the mill to drill and tap 2-56 holes for attaching.
Here they are after some clean-up, ready to be added to the assembly.
And finally, attached to the insides of the fuel bunkers! The cutouts you see on the inside are for some of the piping that will be added later.
With that finished, I started on the Motion Support Plate; a little channel bracket that is used to hold the far end of the cross head guides. It will be riveted to the top of the horn plates.
First I marked it up:
Then cut it out and file/sand to shape. Then forming. I chose to form the channel before I did the cut-out, thinking that the bend would be more uniform that way. Here I’ve just bent the second side of the channel. Bending these little 1/8” lips isn’t as easy as you’d think. It’s hard to bend such a such short little lip. Also, you can see, I had to use a length of ˝” square 1018 steel to form the second bend – the official break is amost 2” wide, and I’ve only got 7/8” between the two bends in the channel.
After forming the channel, I nibbled out one end and shaped it with files. The drawings call for those ˝” extensions to be flat, with no support. But I have picked up from other builds that the cross head guide is poorly supported with the default design. So I chose to add some angled pieces there to provide some additional support for the cross head guide. Hopefully this will help address that problem.
This is where the Motion Support Plate will be attached. I didn’t have time to do that today, so that’ll be where I pick up next time.
Thanks for looking in!
Kim
